On Mon, Jul 13, 2009 at 7:05 AM, Charlie Bell<[email protected]> wrote: > > On 13/07/2009, at 11:39 PM, John Williams wrote: > >> If it takes a lot of energy to condense the water, then you need a >> large wind-turbine or a lot of solar panels. > > Depends how much water you need. >> >> And how much energy does it take to manufacture the wind-turbines or >> solar panels? > > Depends on the answer above. > >> >> Would it have been more efficient to run a large-scale desalination >> plant somewhere else (perhaps with nuclear power?) and pipe the water >> to the needed location? > > Depends on how far you need to pipe it and to how many people.
Those questions were meant to be taken together. It does not depend on how much water (except for economies of scale) since the comparison is per liter of water produced locally by wind-turbine vs. produced elsewhere by other means. > So, a couple of wind units producing 10l/hr (5001/day, roughly - > plenty for drinking and cooking, at least) each of potable water would go a > long way towards lowering the cost (energetic and fiscal) of producing > drinking water. How do you know they lower the cost? The wind units may cost more, per liter per year, than some other source. > I guess that's a long-winded way of saying - need to look at every case on > its own merits, which I guess is probably where you were headed too? More or less. I was just interested in comparing the cost of the wind-turbine or solar-panel system to something more centralized. _______________________________________________ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
